Messy Not Dirty

October 10, 2013

I am what you might call messy.

My house is definitely what you would call messy.

Mr C likes to think he is the clean one and that it’s all my mess but his mum and sister have told me on many occasions that his room used to be an absolute pigsty when he was younger so I know that really he too is what you would call messy.

What with my mess, his mess, Cherry’s mess and now J’s mess, our house does always sometimes look like a toy shop and a launderette have vomited all over it.

Our staircase is NEVER empty.

Our bedroom floor is NEVER free of piles of clean washing.

Our living room floor is NEVER free of toys.

But despite all the mess, I would still class my house as clean.

Maybe not spotless but to be honest I have no idea how anyone manages to have a spotless house!

Here are my top tips for keeping your house messy but not dirty:

– Don’t worry about toys being kicked under the sofa. Once every three months you can make an occasion of pulling them out to hoover underneath and your kids will be entertained for an entire afternoon with the toys they had forgotten they owned.

– Keep on top of the hoovering. I have two hoovers, a normal one and a handheld one. What I would really like is a Dyson but I’m yet to convince Mr C that it’s an essential piece of household equipment, probably because he hasn’t hoovered once in the eleven years we’ve been together. I literally love hoovering, my handheld one is the best thing I ever bought as I can quickly suck up crumbs without the hassle of getting the large one out of the cupboard and plugging it in. This is especially useful when you have kids.

– Invest in a steam cleaner. Not only do they make everything feel super duper clean, they clean pretty much anything and actually make the process FUN! Who’d have thought it?!

– Buy a dishwasher. I actually once said that I wasn’t bothered about having a dishwasher as it’s just as much work to empty it and refill it as it is to wash up, how wrong I was. I actually cannot imagine my life without it now. We had to take a unit out of our kitchen to fit it in but it was so worth it. We no longer have dirty plates all over our kitchen!

– Have a ‘man crap cupboard’. Mr C always gets home from his workshop filthy as he grovels around under cars all day, this means that he usually leaves a trail of his dirty clothes and belongings around the house. It used to really annoy me so now I just shove it all in the cupboard under the stairs. It’s also a good place for chucking all the random tools, tape measures and paperwork you find lying around the house. Basically anything of his goes in the cupboard under the stairs. Simple!

– Redecorate a lot. Everything feels cleaner with a new coat of paint, and it also makes it feel like you have moved house. Until you get bored of it, but then you just repeat.

– Move the furniture around. Moving furniture to clean underneath it is boring but moving furniture to give your room a new look is fun and you can hoover as you go making the room feel extra clean.

-Same goes for the cupboards in your kitchen. It drives Mr C insane as by the time he learns where the pepper is kept I have moved all the cupboards round again but at least they are always clean and we don’t have any years out of date food in them.